


Hate To Admit It, But

by Jiksa



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, Fashion Model RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heartbreak, M/M, Smut, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-05-13 16:58:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19255363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jiksa/pseuds/Jiksa
Summary: “I’ll watch,” Nick concedes, scooting back against the sofa. He draws one knee to his chest to hide how hard he is, how much he wants this despite how much he doesn’t. “I’ll watch you fuck your girlfriend.”





	Hate To Admit It, But

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nikibi6](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikibi6/gifts).



> Dear nikibi6, thanks for your amazing prompts. I loved writing this, I hope it gives you the right kind of feels! 
> 
> Written for the [Gryles Exchange](https://grylesexchange.tumblr.com/); thanks to the mods for running a beautiful fest and being endlessly patient. Beta by the loveliest x.

They’re in the car when it happens, Harry’s Range Rover at a near-standstill on the M3 as the sunset blooms around them. Nick toys impatiently with the ribbon-wrapped gift in his lap, tapping his toes against the passenger seat door and watching the unmoving scenery past his window. They’re late, _properly_ late, and at this rate, they won’t make it to Henry’s party until it’s nearly over.

Not that Henry would be surprised, really, or even all that cross. Time and space both have a way of warping around Nick and Harry, of slowing down and speeding up and giving the laws of physics the finger. Nick once suggested they might have stumbled onto a rift in the time/space continuum, back when Harry was seventeen and Nick was already too old for him. Aimee had rolled her eyes and warned him to _be real damn careful with that kid_.

Nick glances at his watch again. _Fuck._ They’ve definitely missed mains, maybe even dessert.

“At least the view’s nice,” Harry murmurs, slumping forwards over the steering wheel and dropping his chin to his ink-covered forearm. His hair’s short again, now that he’s left his band and released a record and grown the fuck up. “Should’ve brought another bag of crisps.”

The radio’s on low, a lady singing _that smile and that midnight laugh_ as traffic stands frustratingly still around them. Nick pops the sun visor down and scans his face. Harry’s been keeping him up at nights; it’s starting to show. They should have left earlier. “Are you going to tell me what you got Henry?”

“Nah,” Harry says, slanting a grin at him. The setting sun catches in his eyelashes, the green of his pupils deep and rich and tinted yellow through his sunglasses. His mouth is impossibly pink, still deliciously swollen from earlier. “He’ll love it though, I promise.”

Nick scoffs, pulling his sunnies back down over his eyes. “I don’t get why you’re keeping it a secret from me, my name’s on the bloody card. I’m equally liable if it’s garbage.”

“Maybe I like the look on your face when you’re caught off guard.”

Nick flips the sun visor back up with a clack and rolls down the passenger side window. The cars around them hum idly. Harry’s turned the engine off to be kind to trees and the environment and polar bears and that. Nick wishes he hadn’t left the radio on. They’re going to be so fucking late. “Don’t be a tosser, please.”

“Nick.”

“Reckon there’s any chance of this traffic clearing sometime this century, or is this just our life now? Permanent motorway people who ran out of snacks in the first ten minutes?”

Harry’s hand slides over Nick’s tensed thigh, stopping at the knee to squeeze gently. “We won’t get there any sooner if you worry, love.”

The woman on the radio sings, _I don’t get no sleep, I don’t get no peace._ Nick drums his fingertips against the armrest, shifting in his seat, not looking at him. The sun’s about to dip behind some buildings, the light burnt orange and deep plum and postcard pretty. It’s hot, too hot, has been all summer. Harry hasn’t really worn a shirt since he sailed into Nick’s apartment four impossibly long days ago. He’s leaving again tomorrow, packing all his things and fucking off again. Nick’s tried not to think about it. 

“Love,” Harry says again, soft and heavy like he means anything by it.

“Can you at least turn the air con on? I know you’re all about polar bears at the minute, but I’d rather not sweat through my shirt before we get there. _If_ we ever get there.”

Harry sighs, turning the key in the ignition without a word. The radio sings, _Thinking about her under your bed sheets._ Nick fingers the big elaborate bow between his fingertips. Late, late, late. Always such a mess when Harry’s near. Always an even bigger one when he leaves.

“So we’ll miss dinner,” Harry says gently. “It’s not the end of the world. We’ll make it for drinks after. Try not to get worked up.”

“I’m not worked up.”

“Clearly.”

“This song always reminds me of you,” bursts out of Nick’s mouth before the thought’s even materialised in his head. He clears his throat, mortified, desperately willing the cars in front of them to move or catch fire or anything at all. “God, we should have left earlier. Why are we like this.”

They sit in awful, impossible silence as the moment drags on longer than moments normally do. Time, space, Nick’s composure — everything warps when Harry’s around.

“What time’s your flight tomorrow?” Nick asks, even though he already knows. “Did we remember to book a car?”

Nick can’t tell if Harry’s looking at him or not, if Harry’s remembering the same thing Nick has been trying desperately not to. He watches a middle-aged woman get out of a silver Prius to stretch her neck and shoulders. Nick can’t tell how long they’ve been here; days, maybe. Months, years, centuries. He feels sore all over.

The sappy pop song ends, a Drake song cued clunkily after it. The silence between the two of them stretches on, thick and tangible and utterly smothering. Harry clears his throat, as if to say something, but then he doesn’t. 

The woman gets back in her car. The sun’s dipped below a row of trees, shadows slowly lengthening across the M3. Nick’s sweating, despite the aircon.

Harry eventually says, “It’s a great fucking song.”

“Mm.” Nick swallows, still staring straight ahead. “God, we’re going to be so fucking late.”

—

Later that night, closer to morning than anything else, Harry leans close to whisper, “Was it Taylor?”

Nick’s arms buckle from Harry’s weight on top of him, forcing him down onto his elbows and forcing Harry deeper inside of him. It’s so good it’s fucking blinding. “ _Fuck_ , Haz.”

Harry’s chin slides in the sweat on Nick’s spine, his teeth catching on Nick’s shoulder, his fingertips pressing bruises into Nick’s side. “Come on, tell me.”

Nick groans, momentarily disoriented from the booze and sex and that sweet, deep, full ache. He turns his head to look at him, frowning. “The fuck are you on about?”

“Swift,” Harry clarifies, wiping his sweat-damp curls out of his eyes and sucking his bottom lip between his own teeth. His hips slow and then still. “Always thought you — you know — after that night with the—”

Something dark and jealous and awful twists low in Nick’s belly at the memory. He kicks his hips back, hard, slamming his fist against the headboard and burying his face in the mattress. “Shut the fuck up,” he growls, “and fuck me.”

“Nick—”

“Don’t stop,” Nick begs, reaching his hand between his own legs. He’s gone almost soft. Harry’s flight is in six short hours. This isn’t the time to think about girls Harry’s loved, girls Nick’s walked in on Harry fucking when they were all blind drunk. It’s all too much. “I’m so close.”

Harry folds over him again, presses his mouth to the back of Nick’s neck like that doesn’t just make it worse. He doesn’t say anything else after that, even after he comes inside Nick and Nick pushes him off, pretending he’s too drunk to get there himself.

—

Harry leaves, and Nick stays. They don’t talk about it. That’s how it goes, after all.

—

It’s two or three weeks after that before Harry’s back, necking champagne straight from the bottle in Nick’s bath tub. Nick doesn’t even know where he got the bottle from, but that’s just Harry’s way, isn’t it. Whatever Harry wants, the universe provides. Money, attention, fame, sex, adoration. Chilled bottles of _Bollinger Special Cuvée Brut_ , apparently.

“So which one’s the snail slime cream?” Harry asks, dropping one damp leg over the side of the tub. His skin’s scalded pink everywhere the water’s touched, the shimmer from the bath bomb making his skin glow golden in the candle light. His cock floats between his legs, limp and lovely and spent. His cheeks are flushed the loveliest shade of pink; from drink or bath water or jet lag, Nick can’t tell.

Nick rifles through his assortment of skin care products, grateful for something to occupy his hands. “This one,” he guesses, frowning at a brown plastic tube. “I think. My Korean’s not great.” He squirts out a dollop and rubs it between his fingers. “Certainly feels like snail slime.”

“Like jizz?”

Nick frowns. “One hundred percent.”

Harry laughs, soft and sweet and slow. “Sure you don’t want to come back in the bath, love?”

“I’m already a raisin, thanks.” Nick squirts what he hopes is Step 6 of the South Korean skin care regimen onto a cotton pad and cautiously wipes it across his face. It stings a little. “Did you work out when your flight was?”

“I’ll look at it tomorrow,” Harry says noncommittally, lazily splashing water around himself. He looks like a work of art, all glistening and flushed and soft around the edges. “You had a little thing for Taylor, didn’t you? Way back when.”

 _In a radical change of topic,_ as Aimee would dryly remark if she was here. Nick scoffs, reaching blindly for another little tube, his heart kicking in his chest. “This, again. No, I didn’t have a thing for your girlfriend in 2011.”

“2012. She wasn’t my girlfriend.”

“Whatever.”

“2012-2013, if you count the few days in January before we called it quits.”

Nick rolls his eyes. “I didn’t have a thing for your girlfriend, regardless of when she dumped you.”

“She didn’t dump me,” Harry argues indignantly, tipping another mouthful of champagne into his mouth. A little bit splashes onto his chin; he wipes it off with the back of his hand. He frowns at the bottle, swilling around whatever’s left. Nick hasn’t had any. “It was mutual.”

“Right.”

“ _I want her long blonde hair,_ ” Harry croons, and it hits Nick deeply and distressingly in the chest. “ _I want her magic touch._ You could have joined us that time, you know. You know the time.”

The bottom falls out of Nick’s stomach. Yeah, he knows the time. The mop of Harry’s curls between her legs, the twist of Taylor’s face when she came, the way Nick watched and touched himself and hated every second of it.

Harry leaves it there, mercifully doesn’t sing the following line of, _yeah cause maybe then, you’d want me just as much._ He’s drunk and jetlagged and exhausted and picking at old scabs. Nick should get him to bed.

“It’s just a song, Haz. It’s got a nice melody.”

“Mm,” Harry says, holding Nick’s gaze in the mirror. There’s a furrow in his brow Nick can’t read. “So it has nothing to do with that time—”

“No,” Nick says, as decisively as he can manage. He can feel his face heating up, the mess of shame and lust and confused feelings still there after all these years. He knows Harry knows he watched them. “I’m cutting you off now. I won’t be responsible for a drunk popstar drowning in my tub.”

“I’m not drunk,” Harry argues weakly, the slight exhausted slur in his voice betraying him. He puts the bottle down and pulls at the drain stopper. “You gonna take me to bed then?”

Nick grabs a towel off the shelf and holds it open for him to step into. “Yes, but not quite in the Bon Jovi ‘Bed of Roses’ style you’re imagining. We’re meeting Pix for brunch at eleven tomorrow, you need your rest.”

Harry loses his balance coming out of the water, crashing clumsily into Nick’s arms. The tub makes slurping sounds as it sucks water and foam down the drain. Harry leans heavily on Nick’s shoulder, letting Nick hold him. “It’s okay if you had a thing for my not-girlfriend in 2012,” he says after a while. “I had a thing for her, too.”

Nick sighs, pressing his forehead to Harry’s temple. It’s all too much, this. “2012-2013 if you count the few days before she dumped you.”

“She didn’t dump me,” Harry argues weakly as Nick pushes him towards the bed. Harry groans as his back hits the mattress, reaching his arms over his head and closing his eyes. He’s all golden and lean and infinitely, heartbreakingly beautiful. Nick loves this, hates how rarely he gets to have it. “Fuck, I love your bed so much.”

“Sleep,” Nick orders. Harry nods, reaching a hand out between them. Nick doesn’t know if it’s for him to hold or not. Every part of this is a mess, the way Harry falls in and out of Nick’s bed without rhyme or reason, the way he fucks and loves beautiful girls in the long moments between, the way they’ve never actually had a fucking proper conversation about any of this.

Harry sleeps. Nick stares at the ceiling.

— 

Harry leaves again, and Nick doesn’t. The weeks bleed into each other, time contracting and expanding and doing what it always does. Harry calls when he’s got time, but he always sounds a little off, a little distant, a little too far out of Nick’s reach.

That’s how it goes. Nick should be used to it by now.

One morning, there are rumours on the internet of Harry dating someone new. A French underwear model, slender and beautiful and young and female. Nick looks at pictures of her, thinks about her body sweat-slick and wet and wanton under Harry’s, thinks of Harry’s fingers inside her and her teeth marks bitten into his shoulder. He can’t stop himself from thinking about her in Harry’s bed, her taut body arching to meet his, and the guilt after he comes in his own hand is crushing and humiliating.

He should be used to that, too.

—

Harry catches him on the phone one afternoon, just a quick stolen few minutes as Nick’s leaving work and Harry’s waiting for something to start in New York. Harry’s voice is dangerously recognisable over Nick’s car speaker; he rolls the windows shut just in case. He’s so used to keeping Harry a secret, it’s second nature by now.

“I land on the Tuesday,” Harry’s saying, and Nick immediately starts reorganising commitments in his head. He’ll bring Harry along to dinner with Aimee and Ian on Tuesday night. He’ll call in sick on his personal trainer on Wednesday afternoon. He’ll move some meetings around. He’ll change his sheets and stock his fridge and clean his bath tub and buy more of the nice lube Harry likes. He’ll bend time and space to make sure Harry fits. “Bringing someone with me. I think you’ll like her.”

 _Oh_ , Nick thinks, mentally stopping in his tracks. _Oh._ “Yeah?”

“Her name’s Camille. She’s cool.”

Nick swallows. This is new. “Right.”

“You’ll like her. She’s fun.”

“Brilliant.”

“Mm, Harry says, his voice dropping to a low murmur. “She might want to do some stuff with us... if you lot hit it off.”

Nick clears his throat, unable to ease the tightness that’s settled in his throat and jaw. “Some stuff.”

“Yeah. If you’re both into it.”

The penny drops with a startling metallic ring. “Are you propositioning me for a threesome with your girlfriend, Harold?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Harry argues predictably. No one is ever Harry’s after all, even when they foolishly believe Harry to be theirs. “But yes.”

“I don’t fuck women.”

“No,” Harry concedes. Nick hears him take a breath. He doesn’t know if he’s imagining it when he hears a tremor in Harry’s voice. “But I think you like it when I fuck women.”

Nick pushes down on the bulge in his trousers, wincing. Thank god he’s alone in the car. “I’ve got to go, Haz, Fifi’s waiting for me.”

“You’ll think about it?”

“Sure,” Nick says, already hating the intensity of thinking he’s about to do. “I’ve got to go now.”

“You’ll come to mine on the Tuesday night? I’ll cook. We can drink some wine. See if you two hit it off.”

“H—”

“No pressure,” Harry says breathlessly. “Only if you’re into it.”

Nick grips the steering wheel with both hands. No good can come of this. Aimee made their dinner reservation at Le Gavroche six months ago, though all he has to say is _Harry_ and he’ll be forgiven. “I’ll be there.”

—

Harry makes grilled sea bass with oven-roasted vegetables and pours them full glasses of red wine. Camille’s charming, with an easy laugh and a sharp wit and a baggy jumper that keeps slipping off her tanned, toned shoulder. Nick watches Harry move her hair aside and press a kiss to the back of her neck. The crackling old turntable Nick bought him years ago spins lazily in the corner of the room, Nina Simone crooning, _I feel so funny, I feel so sad_.

It’s been a nice night. They’ve made it to the floor, sprawled on pillows they’ve pulled off the sofa, talking about music and life and places they’ve been. An oversized wine glass hangs from Camille’s dainty hand, a red smear of lipstick smudged on its rim. She’s beautiful, mesmerising, captivating. It’s easy to see what Harry sees in her.

Nick wonders if she’s understood yet that Harry isn’t hers to keep, that he isn’t ever anyone’s to keep, or if she’s going to get her heart broken.

“So _Nichola_ ,” Camille says softly, her voice honey-sweet and more heavily accented now that she’s had a few. She stretches her impossibly long legs out, her bare, painted toes stretching out over the hardwood floors. “Harry says you like to watch.”

Nick flicks a look at Harry, whose dark eyes give nothing away. They don’t waver from Nick’s either. “I think _Harry likes to be watched_ , is the more accurate statement.”

There’s the slightest amused arch in Harry’s eyebrow. Nick could kill him.

“Have you ever been with a woman?”

Nick turns to look at her, startled. “Not my cup of tea, love.”

“No?”

Nick drops his eyes to where Harry’s long, beautiful fingers are curled into the inside of her knee like they belong there. “No.”

She sits up, slowly peeling her jumper off her torso. She’s wearing a flimsy silk thing underneath, her nipples pebbled against the swell of her breasts. She’s so thin and young and flawless; Nick doesn’t know whether to hate her or hate himself. “ _Seulement un voyeur, alors._ ”

Nick glances at Harry again. “Your girlfriend’s quite the cunning linguist.”

Harry doesn’t argue, for once doesn’t say, _she’s not my girlfriend._ Instead he slips a hand around her waist and pulls her to him, then slips his other hand under her jaw and pulls her to his mouth. Their kiss is wet, slow, unhurried. A decadence, a show. Teeth, tongue, a pleased sigh.

Nick feels the blood rush between his legs. How utterly humiliating.

Camille kisses with her eyes closed, but Harry keeps his trained on Nick’s. He cards his fingers through her hair, gently fisting strands until she groans in his mouth and slides onto his lap, one leg on either side of his thigh. She’s so soft, so flexible, so delicate, so entirely different to Nick. Harry stops kissing her, pulling her into his neck and letting her grind softly against him.

“So?” Harry asks, his voice barely a whisper. “Are you staying or not?”

Nick swallows. This isn’t how these things are done, but this is the only way he and Harry ever do anything. Impulsively, recklessly, without talking about risks or boundaries or consequences.

Nick should leave. He’s so hard. He’s so heartbroken.

“Nick?”

Nick swallows again, unable to dislodge the lump in his throat. He drains the rest of his wine glass, the tannins bitter on his tongue. “Yeah, Haz,” he says. “Fine.”

“You’ll stay?”

“I’ll watch,” Nick concedes, scooting backward against the sofa. He draws one knee to his chest to hide how hard he is, how much he wants this despite how much he doesn’t. “I’ll watch you fuck your girlfriend.”

Harry’s cheeks flush with that familiar, beautiful heat that makes Nick want to drop to his knees for him. Nick wishes he could kiss him, wishes he was the one in Harry’s lap, wishes he was young and beautiful and pretty enough to hold Harry’s attention for longer than a few days at a time.

“Go on,” Nick says, emboldened by the fucked up mess of lust and shame and grief simmering in him. “Touch her.”

Harry gently cups Camille’s face again, meets her eyes and smiles privately at her as he runs his fingertips over her plump lips. She presses delicate little kisses to the pads of his fingertips, before sucking his fingers into her pretty red mouth. Nick watches the tendons on the inside of Harry’s wrist tighten as he pushes his fingers deep into her mouth, past the point of comfort, until she gags and coughs and spreads thick spit all over his two fingers.

When Harry slips those fingers inside Camille’s lacy underthings, when she moans and writhes and rides his fingers, Nick can’t help but reach into his own pants and touch himself.

It’s beautiful and awful and cruel, the way Harry brings her close and backs off and brings her close again until she’s begging for it. She says his name when she comes, and then she’s reaching for his fly and straddling him and smearing lazy, open-mouthed, panting kisses across his mouth as he sinks inside her. 

Nick watches until it’s over, then watches Harry wrap Camille gently in a blanket and let her doze on his shoulder. Nick looks at him, and Harry looks back, and Nick wipes his hand on his jeans and gets up to leave once the silence becomes unbearable.

—

When Harry calls the next morning, Nick lets it ring out. Twice, then a third later that night. Harry doesn’t call again.

—

July rolls into August without another word, and then Harry stands on a stage in Nashville in September and sings, _yeah cause maybe then, you’d want me just as much_. Nick watches the shaky video clip on youtube in his bathrobe, and the phone’s in his hand before the song’s even over.

He doesn’t even remember to check Harry’s whereabouts or time zones or anything sensible, just finds Harry’s number on his speed dial and waits.

“Nick, hey, wait,” Harry says when he picks up, and then he can hear Harry making excuses to get out of whatever he’s doing, hears him say, “Hold the line, yeah? I’m almost— just wait,” and then the flurry of background noise disappears behind what Nick assumes is a shut door.

“Nick,” comes Harry’s voice, soft and close as though he was right there, like he’s holding the receiver very close to his mouth. Nick squeezes his eyes shut. _Fuck._ “I hoped you’d call.”

“What was that?” Nick blurts, surprised by the ferocity of the words leaving his mouth. “Are you making fun of me? Is this a fucking joke to you?”

The silence stretches for longer than Nick knows what to do with. There’s heavy breathing in his ear; he belatedly realises it’s his own. “I thought— I thought you’d like it,” Harry says, sounding confusingly confused, given the epic fuckery of the situation. “I thought— I just thought.”

“You thought I’d _like_ it.”

“I thought you’d... get it, at least.”

“You thought I’d— No, you know what? No. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Wh—” Harry starts, still sounding so off-kilter and unsure and unlike himself. There's noise again in the background. “What are you— what? Hey, calm down.”

“Don’t bloody tell me to calm down, Harold.”

“Nick,” Harry says again. Someone calls Harry’s name impatiently. Harry uncharacteristically tells them to fuck off and shuts another door. “Listen to me. Th— that song. I think— I mean, It wasn’t really ever about the girl, was it?”

Nick takes a deep, steadying breath. “I don’t fuck women, Harold," he says tightly. "I have no interest in women.”

“So it wasn’t about the girl.”

“Are you thick?” Nick snaps. “That song is not about wanting to fuck girls, it’s about being in— in _whatever_ — with someone who’s with someone else.”

The silence stretches again, but Nick’s fucking had it with the two of them not talking. It's been too long; it's hurt too much. “You better fucking say something right now, or I’m hanging up.”

“I’m not in love with Camille. Or Taylor. Or Kendall or Tess or Emily or fucking anyone.” 

_Or you,_ that cruel little voice in the back of Nick's voice tacks on. “Harry Styles doesn’t do love or commitment or feelings. Very glamorous, very modern, very whatever.”

“You’re not the only one who’s having a hard time coming to terms with this right now,” Harry barks, as though he has any moral high ground to raise his voice from. “Shut up, I’m trying here.”

“Trying? This is you _trying_?”

Harry lets out a frustrated, clipped sound. “You want to know why Taylor dumped me?”

“Oh, I _knew_ she dumped you.”

“Of course she bloody dumped me,” Harry shouts, and then adds with an unexpected and jarring softness, “She's not stupid, she knew I was in— in— in _whatever_ with someone else. Just like Camille did.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Nick—“

“No, fuck right fucking—“

“Nick—“

“Don’t fucking—“

“Love,” Harry calls him, and the tenderness in the endearment makes Nick’s knees buckle. He’s been calling Nick that for years. Nick’s always bloody hated it and loved it in equal measures. “I think— I think it’s about time we properly talked.”

“Don’t play games with me, Harry. I can't just be another one of your not-girlfriends anymore. I can't.”

“We need to talk,” Harry says softly, and then the shaky, wet breathing drowning out all the silence between them isn’t just Nick’s. “I'm coming home to your snail slime and your bed and your face and your everything. I'm fucking terrified, but we need to talk.”

Nick closes his eyes tightly, pulling his bathrobe closed across his chest. It's too much, this. All of this. "Love?"

He hears the catch in Harry's breath, the moment of quiet terror before he opens his mouth, the tremor in his voice when he does. " _Love_."

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ["Girl Crush" by Little Big World.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYZMT8otKdI)


End file.
